The Years That Answer
by scheese.and.quokkas
Summary: A fluffy three-shot, set in 2062. Jane and Maura have spent close to five decades as an out and proud couple, and suddenly find themselves with cause to recount the journey of their life together to an interested teenager.
1. Chapter 1

'Hello? Mrs Isles? Mrs Rizzoli?'

'We're just in the living room, Marsha,' a voice came from down the hallway. 'Come and get warm by the fire.'

Marsha shrugged off her coat, heavy with melted snowdrops, and eagerly went to join her favourite ladies. This was her last job of the night, and she loved the easy banter she often fell into with these two. She was also full of admiration of their home, the living room in particular. The fireplace was the focal point of the room, and in winter all their furniture was turned towards it. A polished mantel jutted out from the genuine stonework, adorned with photographs from various milestones of these womens' lives. A large tribal mask was hung high up above the mantel. She knew it had been a gift from a Cape Verdean tribe Mrs Isles had worked with in Doctors Without Borders in her earlier days, but if she was being honest, it scared her a little. The wall opposite the fireplace, which backed onto the hallway, was covered with one enormous bookshelf. It was filled with fact and fiction alike, all arranged alphabetically, and by subject. The room's atmosphere was an eclectic combination of Mrs Isles' sophistication, and Mrs Rizzoli's need for practicality. It was a strange mix, yet somehow it worked, and managed to come off as cosy and comfortable.

'Good afternoon!' Marsha smiled, entering the living room. 'Or good evening, perhaps? It's already starting to get dark out there.'

'Is it?' Maura craned her neck to look out the large bay windows to her right. 'Goodness, you're right! Would you be a dear and close the curtains?'

'Sure thing, Mrs Isles.'

'Marsha, you've been coming here for over a year now. Please, it's Jane and Maura.'

'No, no,' Jane made herself known for the first time, feigning offence at being spoken for. 'She can call me Mrs Rizzoli.'

'Jane!'

'Okay, okay._ Detective_ Rizzoli.'

'Ignore her, Marsha,' Maura advised, noting the sly grin on her wife's face. 'I fear she's grown bored of me, and her greatest pleasure now comes from taunting visitors.'

'That's not true!' Jane cried indignantly, and was halted temporarily by a few hacking coughs. 'I never get bored of you,' she smiled at Maura.

Maura smiled back and Jane nestled into her a little further.

Marsha often found them like this in the late afternoon: cuddling on the couch with a blanket tucked over their laps. Occasionally, she found them asleep in a loose embrace in the exact same position. And sometimes, she found them reading aloud to one another. Maura had insisted that Jane hear Great Expectations at least once in her lifetime, and they had ordered the book in large print. Great Expectations was not a small book when the font was regular sized, and the large print version was enormous! Marsha had expressed her concerns over them lifting something so heavy, but Maura assured her that she was used to it, and indicated the area of the bookshelf dedicated to her thick volumes of medical and forensic texts. It was so wonderful when she caught them at one of their reading times: bundled with blankets next to the fire, Great Expectations open on one of their laps, and a hot mug of coffee apiece. The expression on Jane's face when Maura was reading was probably her favourite, though. Jane didn't smile like that for anyone else. She had never seen two old people still so in love.

'Just the usual?' Marsha asked, pulling the last curtain. 'Sheet change, vacuum, laundry, and you said last time you'd have a few things for me to iron?'

'Yes, that's right. They're laid out on the end of our bed. Our grandson is competing in the high school senior state speech finals on the weekend.'

'Oh, how wonderful! You must be very proud!'

'We are,' Maura gushed. 'He's such a clever boy.'

'Brains run in the family, see,' Jane gave Marsha a wink. Marsha knew both of Jane and Maura's children had been adopted.

'Oh, and Marsha, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you be able to cut up some butternut squash for me before you go? I want to make soup, but it's such a tough vegetable…'

'Sheesh, Maura,' Jane cut in with a grin. 'Ain't ya working her hard enough already?'

'I… of course. Sorry, Marsha. Please don't feel any obligation.'

'It's fine, Mrs… Maura. No trouble at all, I promise. I'll get the household bits and pieces sorted, and then I'll help you in the kitchen. How's that?'

'Thank you,' Maura smiled. 'I appreciate it.'

At the ripe old age of 86, Jane and Maura weren't doing too badly at all. Marsha had seen photos from their younger days at the Boston Police Department, and they had aged fairly gracefully, considering the demanding roles of their work. Jane had stayed long and thin, which in old age translated to jutting elbows and a sagging pant seat. Her hair remained wild and wavy, though now a little thinner, with less volume, and taken over by strands of dark grey. Maura had gained a comfortable amount of weight, looking soft and healthily rounded. Her hair had turned silver, and she kept it long. Her eyes remained a vibrant hazel, and Marsha loved to see them sparkle.

Both women had mild arthritis, and Maura walked a little bent at the waist. She had a walking stick, but she only used it when Jane wasn't available to offer her arm for balance. Jane had a few respiratory issues, and her eyesight, as Marsha understood, was failing quite considerably. Maura took good care of their health affairs, and had ordered Jane off to the optometrist the moment she complained of blurriness. Though of course, Jane never complained until things were really bad. She'd been sent home with some very strong prescription lenses, which corrected her sight well enough, but which she hated. She never wore her glasses when she and Maura were having down time like this, volunteering that a blurry living room didn't mean she couldn't still hear and feel Maura just the same. Marsha had privately come to the conclusion that that was the reason they always sat so intimately; so Jane could feel grounded in a world devoid of defined edges.

While never quite losing her teasing sarcasm and glorious crassness, Jane had mellowed in her old age. She had acquired that elderly trait of genuinely not caring what anybody thought of her, and Maura had to admit she quite liked it. Jane never thought twice about public affection now, and although it sometimes meant she was unduly rude, she was much more content with life.

'Are you making me soup for dinner?' Jane asked hopefully as Marsha disappeared off to their bedroom.

'That is correct,' Maura smiled, running her fingers through Jane's whispy wild hair. 'You made me bunny pancakes for breakfast, so it's only fair. I thought soup would be nice with this weather.'

'You're nice with this weather,' Jane smiled contentedly as Maura started a gentle head massage. 'Can we watch that serial killer special on TV tonight?'

'Of course, love.'

Jane paused for a moment. 'I miss solving murders.'

'I miss my shiny morgue,' Maura agreed thoughtfully. 'I don't miss phone calls at 3am though.'

'Or 4am,' Jane added. 'Or 5am, or 6am, and I know you were usually up by then, but 7am, and 8am. And sometimes 9am, come to think of it.'

'And that is why, to this day, you have such horrendous caffeine dependence.'

'I like coffee,' Jane defended. 'Is that such a crime?'

'Not the kind you're accustomed to. But in terms of health, you're bordering on being at risk for developing peptic ulcers.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Maura. I'm fit as a fiddle,' Jane protested as she fell into another coughing fit. 'Well, an antique fiddle, at least,' she reassessed. 'Don't make me give it up.'

'I would never dream of asking you to surrender your second greatest love.'

'How do you know coffee isn't my first greatest love?' she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

Jane couldn't see them, but Maura's eyes were sparkling. 'Because I'm still alive,' she said matter-of-factly. 'And saying "first greatest" is redundant, darling.' She pressed a brief kiss to Jane's cheek, and reached for her walking stick.

'Oh, don't go away,' Jane whined, feeling Maura shift forward. 'You feel nice.'

'I thought you wanted soup?'

'Oh, yes. I do want that. Go on, then.'

Maura chuckled as she struggled off the sofa. Getting old was definitely no picnic. She was still in relatively good health, and they were both of sound mind. She was so grateful she still had Jane. And having Home Help two or three times a week was a blessing: Jane was unbelievably stubborn about losing her independence, and Maura knew that she wouldn't cope well if they ever had to move to an aged care facility. People like Marsha had made it possible for them to grow old together in their home, and Maura was endlessly thankful for that.

* * *

'Will you stay and have some supper with us?' Maura asked hopefully, as Marsha finished cubing the squash.

'Oh, you know I'd love to, but I'm afraid I have a couple of bottomless pits waiting for me at home.'

'Ah, teenagers,' the older woman laughed, remembering. 'I understand completely. How are your two? We haven't seen them in a while.'

'They're very good, actually, I shouldn't complain. Sadie's loving high school, and I'm so impressed with Corbin. He's really tackling his studies this year. Actually, I wanted to ask you: Corbin's doing a big project on the Queer Civil Rights Movement for his History class. How would you and Jane feel about doing an interview with him? You're free to say no, of course; I'm sure he can find someone else. It's just he quite likes you two, and I think it would be valuable for him to hear your perspective on things.'

'Oh, wonderful,' Maura smiled. 'I've no objection, and I'm sure Jane won't either. But, you know, Jane and I didn't really grow up "gay". We both exclusively dated men before we realised there were more-than-friendly feelings between us. We might not be his best option?'

'Really?' Marsha asked, fascinated by the information. 'Huh. Well, I'm sure that's fine. I think he mostly wants to chat with somebody who grew up in a pre-marriage equality Massachusetts, and you two have been here for quite a long time?'

'Oh, yes,' Maura confirmed. 'I've lived here most of my adult life, and Jane was born and raised in Boston. Let me just run it by her.' She shuffled out of the kitchen in slippered feet, aided by her walking stick. Heels had been banished to the back of the wardrobe many years ago. 'Jane, darling?'

'Yeah, Maur?' Jane looked up from her position on the sofa to see a Maura-shaped blur passing through the doorway.

'Do you remember Marsha's son, Corbin? He did some gardening for us this last summer?'

'The kid who broke my garden gnome?'

'Oh, Jane, you hated that gnome. You got it from a Secret Santa at a department Christmas party.'

'Yes, I know. I'm sure Frost re-gifted it to me. I remember him saying once that his weird uncle gave him a garden gnome for his birthday. I think he passed it on to me, because gnomes freak him out. I was going to wait until he kicked the bucket, and then put it on his grave,' she gave a cackle. 'And that kid broke it!'

Maura pursed her lips and gave an affectionate eye roll. 'Yes, that was Corbin. And now I'm very pleased he broke your gnome! He's doing a project for his History class on the Queer Civil Rights movement, and he'd like to do an interview with us. Do you have any objection?'

'Well, no, not really,' Jane thought, failing to come up with any reason why not. 'Does he care that we were _outstanding_ heterosexuals before we shacked up together?'

'That doesn't matter,' Marsha entered the room. 'He really just wants to talk to somebody who was around before Massachusetts had marriage equality.'

'Does he want to know your homosexual repression made you date a serial killer?' Jane asked her wife with a mischievous grin on her face, hoping to get a rise out of Marsha. She wasn't disappointed.

'_What?!_' Marsha exclaimed, somewhat horrified. 'You can't be serious!'

'I didn't know he was a serial killer,' Maura defended. 'Jane saved me from him, though,' she added hopefully, trying to diminish the shock factor.

'Plenty of run-ins with serial killers at BPD,' Jane commented, unconsciously running a finger over the faded scars on her palms. 'But I like to think we came out alright on the other side.'

'We can sensor out the gorier details,' Maura reassured her. 'But, you must understand, our romance, and our relationship, has been cultivated amongst corpses and psychopathic perpetrators for a very long while.'

'Something tells me Corbin's going to love hearing about your lives,' Marsha let out a sole chuckle, shaking her head. 'Is it okay to bring him with me next Tuesday evening?'

'Yes, but it has to be finished before 8. There's a new crime drama starting at 8, and Maur's going to make me cannoli if I can guess who the murderer is in the first ten minutes.'

'Understood,' Marsha laughed. 'Okay, ladies, that's me for the evening. Enjoy your weekend, and I'll see you on Tuesday. _Before_ 8.'

Jane gave a grin. 'See you, Marsha. Drive safe.'

'Safe_ly_,' Maura corrected. 'Thank you, Marsha. Keep warm out there, won't you?'

'I sure will,' she finished buttoning her coat. 'Tell your grandson good luck from me?'

'Certainly,' Maura gave a final wave as Marsha disappeared from sight.

The front door clicked shut, and it was suddenly very quiet without the extra company. Maura's childhood and adolescence, and even some of her young adulthood had been quiet like this. She'd been habitually teased or ignored by her peers for the way her mind worked. Her father was busy with his work, her mother constantly consumed by her art. It had been lonely. But then she had met and married Jane, inherited two brothers in law, a mother in law, ironed out the kinks in the bond with her own mother, and built a relationship with her biological mother and half-sister. She and Jane had bought a house, and it had been filled with children and friends and family for decades. The comparative quietness of old age occasionally cast her back to when she was alone and friendless. Remembering Jane was there, and that she wasn't ever leaving, still managed to send a warm jolt of happiness through her chest. Jane, who still liked to hold her at night, and take her arm when they walked. Who would carry the heaviest grocery bags inside, and make her bunny pancakes in the morning. Jane, who was still just as in love with her after 46 years of marriage. She wasn't a big believer in fate, but if it did exist, it had fallen together in the most wonderful way.

'What do you think Corbin wants to ask us?' Jane fumbled for her glasses, and stood up with a few creaks to look at the photographs on the mantelpiece. 'Does he want the mushy stuff about us, or does he want facts about the Civil Rights movement? I'm not so good on the dates that don't involve you.'

'I would hypothesise he wants a little of both,' Maura shuffled over to her. 'I think it's very conscientious of him to want a first-person account of the subject.'

'Of course you do,' Jane grinned affectionately.

'I adore this picture of you,' Maura reached her, pointing at a picture of a much younger Jane when she was an Honour Recruit for the BPD.

'Yeah? So did my Ma. She kept it on her dressing table right up until she died. I like this one,' she picked the picture of herself and Maura finishing the 2010 Boston Marathon off the mantel. 'I think Frankie took it? He hadn't made Detective yet. And I still can't believe you got me to wear that getup.'

Maura peered down at the picture, their younger, much fitter selves looking so vibrant. 'Professionals for Underprivileged Kids of Excellence was a worthy cause! Both your parents embraced me once we crossed the finish line. I felt… very loved. It was unexpected.'

'Hey, I loved you! And I hugged you,' Jane replaced the picture.

'I almost kissed you,' Maura gave a sudden giggle. 'I was so exhausted I nearly forgot we weren't a couple.'

'Good thing we got onto that, then! I've been letting you kiss me for the last… 49 years!' Jane reached out for her wife, pressing a long kiss to her forehead and pulling her closer for a hug. 'Sometimes I still want to kick myself for not making it longer. Is this the kind of stuff the gnome smasher wants to hear about?'

'I hope so,' Maura murmured with her eyes closed, listening to Jane's heartbeat. 'It's been far too long since I've had an excuse to tell anybody how wonderful my life with you has been.'


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: So I was writing and, behold! A wild third chapter appeared. The expected two-shot will now be a three-shot. Apologies for the false advertising! Enjoy!**

* * *

Jane emerged from the bathroom, looking somewhat disgruntled, to find Marsha standing in the hallway. 'Marsha,' she grunted in acknowledgement. 'Where's your offspring? Maur and I are all geared up for our big interrogation.'

'He's with your lovely wife. I think she's doing some baking?'

'Bran muffins and peppermint slice,' Jane nodded. 'Organic and gluten free, or some shit.' Marsha laughed and the pair began making their way to the kitchen. 'I don't know why she didn't make cannoli in advance, because I am so winning this bet.'

'What bet?' Corbin asked, a piece of peppermint slice halfway to his mouth, as Jane and his mother entered the room.

'There's a new crime drama starting tonight,' Maura spoke as she peered critically into the oven. 'And Jane thinks sh-'

'Oh, yeah, yeah. Mom told me,' Corbin took a bite. 'Mmm! Mrs Is, this is delicious!'

'Thank you,' Maura smiled, straightening up and closing the oven door. 'My mother's recipe.'

'Constance or Hope or Angela?' Jane joined Corbin at the kitchen island to sample the baking herself.

'Constance. She wasn't known for her talents in the kitchen, but this is one of the few culinary areas she excelled at.'

'How many mothers do you _have_?' Corbin asked incredulously, reaching for another piece of slice. 'I barely cope with one!'

'My gracious son, ladies and gentlemen,' Marsha ruffled his hair.

'Just ladies, Mom,' Corbin corrected. 'But seriously, Mrs Is, you have three mothers?'

'We'll get to that later,' Jane waved her hand dismissively through the air as Maura's mouth started to open. 'Are those muffins ready yet? I think I'm about to keel over and die of starvation.'

'Another 4 minutes and 23 seconds,' Maura consulted the timer. 'But bran's only going to make it worse, love.'

'Make what worse?' Corbin asked, looking at Jane.

'Nothing,' she grumbled, retracing her steps back to the hallway. 'Where are my glasses? I can't see a thing!'

* * *

Ten minutes later, it was a quarter past six, and Jane and Maura were about ready to be interviewed. Marsha had retrieved Jane's glasses from her bedside table and begun her tasks, Maura had her muffins cooling on a rack in the kitchen, and Jane sat on the sofa with her arms crossed resolutely, very put out that she couldn't indulge in the baking.

'Is it okay if I use a voice recorder?' Corbin asked, and Maura nodded for the both of them. 'Tuesday, November 21st, 2062, 6.15pm, interview with Mrs Is and Mrs Rizz,' Corbin spoke into the device before placing it on the coffee table. 'Okay, so, it took quite a few years for anti-sodomy laws to be repealed across all fifty states, from 1962 to 2003. Illinois was the first state to repeal the law, Massachusetts got on board in 1974. What year were you born in?'

'We're 86,' Jane barked. 'I think. Do the math!'

'Sorry, Corbin,' Maura apologised on Jane's behalf. 'She gets cranky when she's constipated. We were both born in 1976.'

'I'm not cranky!' Jane protested unconvincingly. 'I'm blocked up and bloated and it _hurts_.'

'Darling, I told you there's prune juice in the fridge.'

'I don't _want_ prune juice, Maur! Prune juice is for old people.'

Corbin looked up quite uneasily at his mother, who was dusting the bookshelf, but Marsha only continued to silently chuckle as she went about her work.

'We _are_ old people. It's not going to get any better if you ignore it!'

'I'm not ignoring it! I want kiwis.'

'There are kiwis in the fruit bowl!'

'No there aren't!'

'Oh, Jane,' Maura stood up with some effort and shuffled off to the kitchen. She returned with three kiwis and a bowl less than a minute later. 'Darling, you've got to start wearing your glasses.'

'Is that what the brown blur was?' Jane asked, surprised. 'I thought you'd bought a coconut.'

* * *

Jane was much more agreeable after that, having been successfully placated by the fruit. She sat and peeled the skin off with almost childlike enthusiasm, and started to legitimately enjoy reminiscing about her past with Maura as Corbin continued with his questions.

'So I'm sure you know, Massachusetts was the first state in the US to legalise same-sex marriage. That was in 2004, which would have made you… uh…'

'Twenty-seven and twenty-eight,' Maura supplied. 'I remember it well. My mother had been very vocal in the community, in favour of the law change. She painted a few abstract pieces to do with the fluidity of human sexuality, too. We have one hanging just outside the study.'

'Which mother was this? And why so many?'

'Constance, again. I was adopted by Constance and Julian Isles virtually from birth. They're the ones I think of when people ask after my parents. Hope was my biological mother, and I had no contact with her until my late thirties. Angela was my mother-in-law,' she looked at Jane and smiled. 'And she was lovely. Very involved in absolutely everything to do with Jane and I. She moved into my guesthouse when she and Jane's father divorced, though we weren't a couple at that point.'

'So Constance was totally cool with marriage equality. What about Angela?'

'My parents were Catholic,' Jane stated as she dug into her last kiwi, as if this was explanation enough.

'So… not cool?'

'I remember Ma having a few rants about it when the law first went through,' she chewed thoughtfully. 'Dad was pretty quiet about the whole thing.'

'Did that bother you?'

'Not so much. I felt differently, but I didn't think it would ever affect me. Kinda figured it was just their generation's way of thinking, y'know? But then this one,' she ducked her head in Maura's direction and intertwined their hands, 'came and pulled the rug out from under me. And it was only then I started caring about what my parents thought.'

'How did they react when they found out you were a couple?'

'Well… it was after my parents' divorce, and my Pop was down in Florida banging some chick who was barely out of a training bra. I got lucky with Ma, I think. Me and Maur had been best friends for ages, and Ma liked her almost as much as I did.'

'How did you tell her?'

'I didn't. I'd been involved with this guy in the military, who I went to high school with. He was stationed in Afghanistan, and we had this pseudo-relationship. Then he got shot and could barely walk, and things fell apart, and, well, details,' Jane shrugged.

'Angela hated him,' Maura supplied, looking almost smug.

'Yeah, she did,' Jane laughed. 'He got better, anyway, and we kinda picked things up again. Then he was promoted to Colonel, and was on track to becoming a General. It came down to choosing me or the Army. So he gave me an ultimatum.'

'Marry him, or he'd go back to the Middle East for good,' Maura sputtered. 'Can you believe that?'

'Right,' Jane nodded in agreement. 'My gut told me pretty much instantly that I didn't want to be his wife. He'd come back from Afghanistan a day early, to surprise me. I had over a hundred vacation days owing, an-'

'116, to be exact,' Maura cut in.

Jane chuckled at the bemused expression on Corbin's face. 'You get used to that after a few decades of daily contact,' she advised him. 'So, I could have easily taken one and spent the day with Casey. But instead I hung out with Maur and solved a murder. It was a good day. And I realised, just after we cracked the case, that I would much rather go back to Maura's place and cuddle with her and Jo Friday on the couch and watch crappy TV than go back to my sort-of Army boyfriend.'

'Josephine Friday was Jane's Yorkshire Terrier,' Maura informed Corbin. 'She died in 2026.'

'Right, so then how did you get from "I want couch cuddles" to "I want to spend the rest of my life with you?"'

'Well it was strange, because you know I told you we'd been best friends for a while? I didn't realise how coupley we already were until years later. We'd been sharing a bed, and cooking together, and bickering, and having dinner dates all this time.'

'We even played a lesbian couple on a number of occasions,' Maura laughed. 'To fend off Jane's family friend Giovanni, and at her high school reunion.'

'We didn't play gay at my high school reunion! I took you along for moral support, and everybody assumed we were a couple!'

'Oh. You might be right,' Maura frowned, looking at the ceiling. 'She went gay for an undercover operation once.'

'Yeah, yeah, not as thrilling as it sounds,' Jane waved a hand in Corbin's direction, seeing his excited face. 'I didn't know I liked being with Maur so much until Casey came and kind of inadvertently threatened to take it all away. After we cracked that case, I didn't go straight home to Casey. I went to the shooting range and chewed through about five hundred human targets. I think I just needed to get some frustration out. Shooting targets helps clear my head.'

'It's a mature psychological defence mechanism called sublimation,' Maura added. 'You channel unwanted or socially unacceptable feelings into something productive.'

'Right, so after all that shooting, I was pretty exhausted. And I was thinking about my future, and realised I would be perfectly content – _more_ than content – to go home to Maura every day for the rest of my life. And then it was like, BAM. This light bulb went off in my head, and I realised I wanted Maura the same way Casey wanted me. I was in love with the Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.'

'She still is,' Maura interrupted with a grin.

'That's true,' Jane acknowledged, squeezing Maura's hand, and giving her an enormous smile. 'What was the question, again?'

'How your mother found out you were a couple.'

'Right, right, right,' Jane was starting to get quite animated with her tale. 'So I got home, expecting Casey to be there waiting to grill me about where the hell I'd been all day. But nobody was there except Jo; I guess he wanted to give me some time and space to mull things over. But, like I said, I'd nailed the answer to his ultimatum at the shooting range. So I drank myself through a couple of six packs and figured out what I was going to do about Maura, since there was like, a 99.99% chance she wasn't into _any_ chicks, let alone _me_.'

'Statistically inaccurate,' came a fond voice. 'General belief at the time was that 1 in 10 people were homosexuals. Though I'm sure the incidence was a lot higher and self -reporting in the surveys conducted was inaccurate. There was still a reasonable level of shame associated with any variety of deviation from the heterosexual norm. At the very least, there was a 90% chance I wasn't "into chicks".'

'And so I'm lying on my couch,' Jane didn't even bother commenting, 'tipsy as hell, with this big gay revelation washing over me, and there's a knock at my apartment door.'

'The object of your affections?' Corbin guessed. 'Or you Army dude?'

'No. My mother. With a pillow under her arm, ordering me to house her for the evening.'

'I thought she was living in Mrs Is' guesthouse?'

'She was, but Maur's biological mob boss grandfather had just got out of prison and needed somewhere to live.'

'Her… what?' Corbin's mouth had dropped open and quickly turned into excited approval.

'Don't ask,' Jane advised. 'We'd actually put Old Man Doyle in an old folks' home that afternoon, but Ma reckoned she was gonna give it a few days to let the old guy smell dissipate. Now, I'd told my little brother Frankie about the marriage ultimatum, and he'd told Ma, and Ma wanted all the details. And I can count on one hand the number of times we've had proper heart to hearts, but she asked what happened, and I CRIED. I never cry.'

'That's also inaccurate,' Maura informed Corbin. 'She cries rarely, but she does cry. I successfully scared her to tears one Halloween when I dressed our daughter as a witch.'

Jane gave an involuntary shudder. 'Okay, so I was crying and I told her I didn't want to marry Casey, but that didn't totally explain why I was so upset. She wheedled out of me that there was someone else, but I refused to tell her who. She saw Maura kissing me in the kitchen a few weeks later when she'd moved back to the guesthouse. Waited a whole _month_ to tell me she knew, and that it was okay.'

'You were worried your feelings wouldn't be reciprocated, but you were locking lips a few weeks later?!' Corbin laughed. 'How'd _that_ happen? Mrs Is, when did you know you felt the same way?'

'I had quite a lonely childhood,' Maura began. 'Both my parents were devoted to their work, and I was left mostly to my own devices. My nickname as a working professional was Queen of the Dead, but as a child, I was called a nerd and a bookworm, and I suppose that was true enough. I did prefer the company of textbooks and fictional characters to that of my peer group. It was very rare that I had friends, and I didn't ever really have a best friend until I met Jane. Our initial friendship came slowly, but once the foundations were laid, we were fairly inseparable. I spent more time with Jane than I ever had with any other one person in my whole life, and I appreciated our closeness from the beginning. My romantic attraction towards her progressed very easily and naturally past the bounds of friendship, but I was afraid my feelings were unrequited. I refused to risk losing Jane from my life entirely for the sake of having more of her, so I never made a move. I'd have rather lived my whole life having her strictly as a friend than plunging on in an all-or-nothing approach.'

'How long before this marriage ultimatum did the romantic attraction begin?'

'Oh, I'd estimate between three and a half and four years.'

'Woah,' Corbin looked suitably impressed. 'Mom's always saying good things come to those who wait.'

'A truer word has never been spoken,' Maura smiled, leaning over to give Jane a kiss on the cheek.

'For my research project, I'm starting with Stonewall,' Corbin explained. 'Then I'm tracing LGBT history from there through to all 50 US states achieving marriage equality in 2024. But I want it to be more human-centric than political. Would you tell me about your experiences growing up in a pre-equal marriage America? What kind of stuff was happening to gay people? And then, if we have time, I'm actually really curious about your family dynamics.'

Jane, having told most of her favourite part of the story, and not liking to think too much about the darker days of same-sex couple rights, shifted further towards the edge of the sofa, and then leaned back to nestle into Maura's side. Maura smiled, resting her arm over Jane's shoulder, and placing the glasses Jane had removed onto the arm rest.

'Let me see,' Maura cast her mind back to her childhood and adolescence. 'My mother was an artist, quite internationally renowned for her visual pieces, though she liked to dabble in a little abstract art and impressionism from time to time.'

'Not relevant,' Jane mumbled into Maura's knit sweater.

'Oh,' Maura looked slightly put out. 'What I mean is that she was big on art, and the art world seems to attract the company of gay men. There were a lot of gay men in my house growing up, and it was never hidden. My mother didn't try to avoid the truth of their love, and I didn't really know it was an issue until I got to high school and teenagers were being taunted with accusations of homosexuality.'

'I got called a dyke in high school,' Jane volunteered.

'What?!' Maura exclaimed. 'That's awful! Not by Joseph Grant, I hope?'

'Naw, this chick called Chelsea in my gym class. I was coming back from the showers after this _really_ kick ass game of field hockey, and copped an eyeful of her cleavage in the changing room as she was walking towards me. Think I stared a second too long.'

Maura chuckled. 'Your gay was in there all along, Jane Rizzoli. Was it good cleavage?'

'Yes, it was,' Jane said thoughtfully. 'Not half as good as yours, though.'

'Um…' Corbin cut in.

'Oh, _what_?' Jane cried disbelievingly. 'Are you seriously going to tell me that 2062 teenagers are prudes? You wanna know about that undercover gay bar operation? While I was on dates with suspect women I'd arranged to meet over the internet, Maur was dressed as a waitress, collecting DNA from their used glasses. The top she was wearing… it was almost like a corset, and…'

'Suffice to say Jane didn't have to _act_ very gay that night,' Maura grinned like a Cheshire cat.

'BPD thanks you for your contributions to the operation,' Jane rolled her eyes, grinning back.

'There were plenty of gay people about when we were growing up,' Maura steered them back on course. 'Though I suspect I was more acutely aware of who they were because of my mother.'

'I didn't know of any for ages,' Jane agreed. 'Probably also because of my mother.'

'Oh, you were probably surrounded by quite a few. It was just hard for gay people to know who to trust, because people that were perfectly friendly and considerate in almost every other respect often turned out to be vehemently anti-homosexual. I think, perhaps, in retrospect, my childhood house may have served as some kind of safe haven.'

'There was a lot of bullying going on. You kind of expected it from people on the streets, but it was also coming from the police, and people in power. There was nobody to turn to. I guess it didn't affect Maur and I as much as it did a lot of other people, but when your _government_ tells you you're worthless… A couple of kids at my high school committed suicide because the jocks made their lives a living hell.'

'A friend of my mother's, also,' Maura nodded her head sadly. 'His partner of nine years was hospitalised with terminal liver cancer, and he wasn't allowed in to see him, even in his last hours. Brendan took his own life three days after Raymond's death. My mother took me to his funeral, and there wasn't a single mention of their relationship.'

'There were the out and proud ones, though,' Jane reminded her. 'Who somehow managed to just roll with the punches. And God knows there were a lot of punches. We grew up with the gay icons of the '80s: Cher, Madonna, Queen, Prince, Dolly Parton, David Bowie, Diana Ross, Elton John.'

Corbin looked at them with a fairly blank face.

'Oh for the love of all that is good in this world, tell me you've heard of Elton John?' Jane cried incredulously.

'Uh, sure, I've heard of him. He sang, uh… Yellow… Brick Road?'

Jane buried her face in Maura's armpit. 'What is wrong with the youth of today?' she mumbled.

Maura laughed. 'I think perhaps Elton John is to Corbin what Bing Crosby was to us.'

'Who?'

'My point exactly,' Maura gave Jane's shoulder a squeeze. 'These gay icons helped to make homosexuality mainstream, though there was radical opposition from the Church for a long time, and it was still a pretty scary place to live in. A lot of people weren't brave enough to live out in the open, so they either lived a lie, or lived in secret. It's sad, really, because the homosexual community has given the world a lot of beauty. There's a quote my mother liked: "If Michelangelo had been straight, the Sistine Chapel would have been wallpapered."'

'That's good,' Marsha chuckled as she entered the room. 'Corbin, honey, it's almost 8 o'clock. Are you nearly done?'

'Oh, wow, that went fast,' Corbin checked his watch, and looked back to Jane and Maura. 'Are you busy tomorrow? Can I come back?'

'I'm not back here until Friday,' Marsha reminded him.

'He's very welcome to drop by after school,' Maura told her. 'Though it's our turn to host Thanksgiving this year, and there are going to be about nine people arriving sometime in the evening in preparation for Thursday's festivities.'

'Oh, I don't want to put you out,' Corbin hastily tried to assure them he could come back another time.

'Nonsense! It's just family: our children and their spouses and our grandchildren. If you're still here when they arrive I'm sure they'll have plenty to tell you about their upbringing with us!'

'That might actually be really useful,' he agreed. 'If you're sure?'

'Do you know who Queen is, Corbin?' Jane asked suddenly.

Corbin frowned at her suspiciously. 'I thought England had a King now?'

'Oh my God,' Jane buried her face in her hands. 'Queen's a band from the '80s. I'm going to dig through my old CD collection and enlighten you tomorrow. I refuse to answer any more questions about my life until you've properly appreciated Bohemian Rhapsody. Deal?'

'Yeah, deal,' Corbin grinned.

'Okay, good. Go away now, I'm about to earn myself some cannoli and I need to mentally prepare. And by "mentally prepare", I mean "relax with beer".'

'You're a poet, Mrs Rizz,' Corbin stood up to follow his mother into the hallway.

'I'll see you ladies on Friday. Thanks very much for this,' Marsha said from the doorway.

'No worries,' Jane switched on the TV and waved goodbye without turning around.

'Our pleasure,' Maura smiled. 'See you tomorrow, Corbin.'

As Jane went through to the kitchen to grab herself a beer, and pour Maura a glass of wine, she heard Corbin excitedly tell his mother as they exited the house, 'Mom, they have CDs, like the ones we saw in Goodwill!'

She chuckled in amusement, and went to join her wife for a cosy evening of the good guys beating the bad guys.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Last chapter! It's almost exclusively dialogue, but it _is_ an interview. Enjoy!**

* * *

'Hey kid,' Jane opened the front door grinning like the cat that got the cream. 'Want some cannoli? We got plenty!'

'I take it you won your bet,' Corbin stood standing on their front porch wearing his school uniform. 'Way to go Mrs Rizz! Who was it?'

'The postman,' she answered, moving aside to let Corbin through. 'The perfect excuse to walk past somebody's house every day and not look like a stalker. The cops got onto him, but then he took one of them hostage and nearly got away. So BAM,' Jane's eyes suddenly came alive as she turned her hand into a gun. 'Right between the eyes. The cop on this new show is a pretty good shot. I was better, though.'

'Jane, are you gloating already about winning that bet?' Maura shuffled into the hallway wearing oven gloves. 'I need to glaze the turkey; can you put all the frozen goods in the chest freezer downstairs?'

'Yes ma'am,' Jane saluted her wife, and gave her a quick kiss as she and Corbin passed through to the kitchen.

'Woah,' Corbin stopped in his tracks. At least half the kitchen floor was covered in grocery bags, with a small trail cleared from the doorway to the oven and the kitchen island. '_This_ is all for Thanksgiving?'

'We got a lot of thanks to give,' Jane shrugged. 'And our son alone can eat two cheesecakes for dessert _after_ a three course dinner.'

'Jane was trying to teach him a lesson for being greedy,' Maura joined the conversation, shuffling past Jane to get back to her turkey. 'Made him keep eating until he threw up. _I_ didn't condone this of course, but I swear on my life, he got through two entire cheesecakes and started on the cannoli before he ran to the bathroom.'

'How're your muscles, kid?' Jane bent down with a groan and a creak to peek into shopping bags, looking for meat and ice cream and frozen desserts. 'These are going down to the basement, just under the stairs to the second storey.'

'Darling, could you find the baby gate and bring that up, too?' Maura turned around as Corbin dutifully disappeared with an armful of groceries. 'Archer phoned earlier to remind me that Emilia's crawling and I'll never forgive myself if she falls down the stairs.'

'Yeah, sure,' Jane straightened up with a wince, and loaded herself up with bags. 'Any other requests?'

'Yes,' Maura smiled. 'That bottle of Fromm Pinot Noir we got from Blenheim, please.'

'Who's Blenheim?'

'Not a person! Blenheim, New Zealand, Jane!' Maura hit her wife with a tea towel in mock exasperation. 'We went there on a winery tour two years ago!'

'Oh, I remember! I got drunk and thought our van was going to have a head-on collision because they drive on the wrong side of the road,' Jane said, nodding. 'They speak funny there, too,' she added as an afterthought.

'The New Zealand accent is one of the newest varieties in the native-speaking English world,' Maura informed her. 'I quite liked it.'

'I didn't see a single hobbit,' Jane pretended to grumble, heaving the groceries out of the kitchen.

* * *

Dumping her cargo at the top of the stairs, she descended down to the part of their house that was rarely visited anymore. The basement had been used as a kind of rumpus room for the kids, but in the years after they left home, it had morphed into a storage space. 'Whatcha found?' she asked Corbin, who was looking at a shelf containing dusty trophies.

'Awards and stuff,' he picked one off the shelf. 'Target shooting champion 2032 – Isla C. Rizzoli.'

'And 2033 and 2034,' Jane pointed proudly. 'I coached her team. She's got one hell of an eye.'

'Archer C. Rizzoli – Valedictorian 2037. Wow.'

'He won the state Chess Championship his senior year as well,' Jane blew the dust off a certificate. 'Our babies were not too shabby.'

'I'll say. What do they do now?'

'Isla's an EMT,' Jane replaced the certificate and started looking around for the baby gate. 'Most days on the air ambulance.'

'Shooting champ to paramedic?' Corbin questioned.

'She keeps a clear head under pressure and she thinks quick,' Jane stated, as if this were the most obvious link in the world. 'And Archer's an architect. He's just made junior partner at his firm, and he's been drawing up crazy looking designs that rich people are almost wetting themselves over. There you are,' Jane zeroed in on the baby gate, partially hidden behind a dismantled bed frame. 'I don't know why the hell Maur holds onto this crap. Can you bring the rest of those groceries down, Corbin? I've got to clean the dead spiders off this thing.'

* * *

Having completed his impromptu task, Corbin sat atop the chest freezer while Jane peered at their extensive wine collection behind her glasses, looking for Maura's prized pinot noir.

'Gotcha!' she cried suddenly, plucking a dark bottle off the shelf. 'Now, I believe I promised you an enlightening,' she spun around to face Corbin. 'Five minutes, in the living room. And don't sit in my spot,' she called as he bounded up the stairs.

* * *

Jane walked stiffly into the living room, holding a cracked plastic case. 'Queen – Greatest Hits,' she showed him the cover art as though it was the Holy Grail, not getting close enough for him to touch it. 'No speaking or I'll spank you. And I call air guitar.'

Corbin grinned curiously as Jane fed the disc into the stereo and selected the track. She leaned back against the book case with her arms folded and watched Corbin's reaction as the opening bars filled the living room. Corbin was feeling a little intimidated under Jane's gaze, feeling pressure to give her a positive reaction, but unable to concentrate properly on the music while she was watching him so intently. For more than two minutes Jane barely moved a muscle, and while a very attractive beat had been established, the music sounded somewhat melancholy. Maura entered the room at this point, and took a seat opposite Corbin.

'Just wait,' she whispered to him. 'Coming up is what Jane likes to call an "epic guitar solo".'

Sure enough, the score quickly swelled, and Jane all but leapt into action as the impressive twanging of well-versed fingers on an electric guitar blared from the speakers. Jane's stance was almost comical; her feet wide apart, bent at the knees, and leaning back slightly, her fingers flew up and down imaginary frets and manipulated strings with a pick that didn't exist. She frowned in concentration and flicked her hair from her face, as she lip synced along with the lyrics.

'"So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?"' she looked straight at Corbin. '"So you think you can love me and leave me to die?"' was directed at Maura. '"Ohhh baby. Can't do this to me baby! Just gotta get out. Just gotta get right out of here".'

'She's never picked up an electric guitar in her life,' Maura giggled as Jane attempted to hop across the living room in true rock star style. 'She would never have attempted this sober fifty years ago.'

Jane played on valiantly through the remainder of the song, and received enthusiastic applause from her wife and the son of the Home Help at the song's ending. 'Thank you,' she bowed as low as her ancient spine would allow. 'Thank y- Oh, God,' she wheezed. 'I'm all out of breath. Where's my asthma stuff?'

'Here, love,' Maura held out an inhaler. 'Come and sit down, Corbin's waiting for his interview.'

'Phew. Yeah, okay,' Jane took a constricted breath in and made her way over to the sofa. 'What did… you think?' she wheezed. 'Of… the song?'

'It was really good, Mrs Rizz. I'll listen to some more of their stuff tonight when I get home.'

'Good,' Jane nodded. 'Freddie Mercury was… as queer as… a football bat... Put that… in your project. That gays… know… how to… make good music.'

'Will do,' Corbin laughed, turning on his voice recorder. 'So, last night we were still talking about your experiences growing up in a homophobic world. Any more thoughts on that?'

'Yes, actually,' Maura spoke, shifting down the sofa to accommodate Jane, who had decided she was going to lay supine with Maura's lap as a pillow. 'I was reading through my notes on a few old BPD case files, and came across two separate incidents of what was later deemed to be corrective rape.'

'That doesn't sound good,' Corbin frowned. 'What is that, exactly?'

'The pathophysiology appears the same as the standard rape crime: typically a male perpetrator, female victim, forced penetration of th-'

'Maur,' Jane interrupted, her breathing still ragged, though markedly improved. 'We told Marsha we'd… edit out the gory details.'

'Yes, of course,' Maura shook her head, as if trying to physically shake the morgue from her mind. 'Sorry. What's different about corrective rape is the intent, which is much more Jane's jurisdiction than mine.'

'Yeah,' Jane picked up. 'Brutal rape crimes usually occur… so that the perp can fulfil some sick sexual desire, or feel powerful. But… corrective rape crimes are usually about trying to turn someone who's gay… straight by sexual force. Since when does… raping a lesbian make her want more of that?' Jane threw her hands in the air, disgusted. 'It's the worst logic I've ever heard.'

'Shh, darling,' Maura smoothed Jane's hair back from her forehead. 'Perhaps it wasn't wise to start with something so dark,' she looked at Corbin apologetically.

'That's okay,' he said quickly. 'I think it's important to know about.'

'I remembered a rumour from high school that my English teacher got fired for being gay,' Jane added. 'I thought he'd just left because it was such a crappy school, but looking back, I wouldn't be surprised. I always wondered why he wasn't married.'

'What do you know about AIDS around that time?' Corbin asked suddenly.

'Freddie Mercury died from AIDS complications,' Jane emphatically raised her head to tell Corbin. That was all she evidently knew on the subject though, because she settled her head back into Maura's lap and closed her eyes.

'AIDS was a nightmare, for gay men especially,' Maura spoke softly, smoothing back Jane's hair. 'It started about the 1980s, and they called it GRID at first – Gay Related Immune Deficiency. The idea that AIDS was a disease spread due to homosexual activity survived for decades after that, although it was discovered very quickly that the condition was affecting a much wider demographic. I was still very young when the AIDS panic really blew up in the media, and so a lot of what I learnt about it came from my mother, and research of course, in later years. From what I understand, there was quite a culture of promiscuous sexual activity, and condoms were used primarily to prevent pregnancy rather than the spread of sexually transmitted infections. Using protection inadvertently said you didn't trust your partner, and in that regard, there was almost a 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy among the gay community.'

'Did you know anyone with AIDS?'

'Not at the time, though I later learnt that several of my mother's friends had had AIDS, and that was what had killed them. It was a very scary time, Corbin; a lot of people were scared to get tested, and a lot of people were in denial. It wasn't common practice to ask after someone's HIV status, and so I suppose in an effort to uphold the illusion that everything was normal, people were still sleeping around, which of course only served to amplify the problem. People were also contracting HIV through blood transfusions, and sharing needles, and new cases of AIDS were cropping up on new continents. You can virtually trace the disease's spread across the world.'

'And so I suppose people blamed the gays for the spread of AIDS?'

'Yes, particularly around that time. A woman named Anita Bryant had been leading a very vocal political campaign advocating for a repeal of a new law in Florida that banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.'

'You mean… the law was pro-gay rights, and she wanted to make it anti-gay rights again?'

'Yes, that's right. And she succeeded, in 1977. She had in many ways become the face of the anti-gay movement, and that was still reverberating in the '80s when the AIDS epidemic took root. The same year that the law was repealed, Florida prohibited gay adoption, and Bryant famously quoted, "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children". Which is inherently false, of course. Homosexuals are no less capable of reproduction than their heterosexual counterparts, though there was no confusion that what she _meant_ was biological reproduction with their same-sex partners.'

'Your children – are they biological or adopted, if you don't mind me asking?' Corbin queried, as Jane gave a snore. 'I… think she's fallen asleep,' he added.

'Air guitar usually tires her out,' Maura nodded knowingly, smiling down at her slumbering Jane. 'Both our children are adopted. We weren't married until we were 39, and you might argue that we were both past our reproductive peaks at that point. Some circumstances arose which gave Jane and I the opportunity to adopt, though I'm not sure that you want me to go into all of that?'

'No, please do,' Corbin sat up eagerly. 'I think it's cool that you've got this generational line of adoption going on.'

'Well, okay. Jane had a CI - that's a Confidential Informant -who w-'

Maura was cut off mid-sentence as her mobile rang, and Jane was jolted out of her shallow slumber.

'It's Archer,' she spoke, looking at the screen. 'Hello love… No, not me, though I can't say the same for your mother… Oh, nonsense, we'll just have an early night… Contrary to popular belief, turkey is no higher in tryptophan than most other poultry, so-… Oh, wonderful! When can we expect you? And have you heard from Isla?... Yes, I thought so, too… Okay, love. We'll see you then.'

'Wha'sappening?' Jane mumbled as Maura hung up, wiping a spot of drool from the corner of her mouth.

'Archer's got off work early; he and Adelyn and the kids will be here about 6.'

'And what about Isla?'

'She's refused to miss her kickboxing class, but Tom reportedly has the car packed up already, so they'll swing by the gym and pick her up en route. They'll be here about 7.'

'Okay,' Jane sat up with great effort and arranged herself more alertly on the sofa. 'What'd I miss?'

'The AIDS epidemic, and Anita Bryant,' Corbin filled in.

'That bitch,' Jane spat out, and Corbin's eyebrows shot up his forehead.

'Jane! Language!' Maura gasped.

'Not sorry. Anita Bryant like Anita Hole in the Head,' Jane grinned. 'Saw that graffitied in an alley once. Made my day.'

'Yes, well, Corbin asked about our adoption processes, so I was just explaining about Rondo and-'

'Rondo!' Jane beamed, remembering. 'Rondo was my CI. He was this homeless guy who took quite a liking to me, and called me Vanilla. I'd give him a bit of cash, and he'd give me a bit of info. He knew the word on the street, y'know? Anyhow, he helped out a lot of street kids, and one of them had got knocked up. He said she was really smart; had a shitty home life, so got emancipated from her parents, but was taking AP Chem and all that. I think she's a doctor now, actually. She didn't want to keep the baby, and he asked me if I knew of anyone who wanted one. I talked to Maura, we talked to the kid, got the legal stuff sorted, six months later we were parents. That's our daughter Isla, who prioritises a kickboxing class over family gatherings.'

'We kind of… happened upon Archer,' Maura continued. 'We'd been working all day on a difficult case, and it was shaping up to be an all-nighter. It was just after midnight, and Jane and I decided to go for a walk and see if we could find some takeout. There's a church just down the block from BPD, and we found a baby half frozen on the doorstep, screaming. We took him straight to the hospital of course, and Jane did some detective work to track down the mother. She was a heroin addict, and didn't want her son. Jane and I discussed adopting a second child, though Archer had been born an addict and we weren't sure what the outcome might be. His birthmother agreed that we could take full guardianship of him, and we arranged a meeting with our attorney.'

'And then she didn't show,' Jane said, almost with a glare. 'Found her dead at home, overdosed on heroin. Couldn't tell if it was accidental or intentional. Didn't have a single lead on the father, though pretty much everyone I spoke to reckoned he would have been one of her "clients", and from the sounds of things she was none too short on those.'

'Meanwhile, Archer was still in hospital, and we'd been visiting him in the NICU. He was having frequent tremors and crying, and having trouble feeding, which is typical of infants with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome. He was on morphine, and Jane and I were becoming quite dangerously attached, but all the legal claim we had to him was a voice recording of his birth mothers' acquiescence at the Police Department.'

'Which was very close to nothing,' Jane added. 'Maur got us a damn good attorney though, because after a shit ton of paperwork, and a court hearing, and lots of meetings, and more waiting than I care to do ever again, we legally adopted Archer. He'd been moved from the hospital to short term foster care by then.'

'That's so great!' Corbin sounded genuinely pleased. 'Did you get to name them, or did their birth parents do that?'

'We chose their names,' Maura answered.

'When Maur says "we", she means "she",' Jane corrected, to Corbin's confusion.

'We came to a compromise,' Maura clarified. 'I got to choose their first and middle names, in exchange for them being Rizzolis rather than Isleses.'

'Hyphenating didn't sound so good,' Jane added.

'So Isla was as close as I could get to Isles,' Maura grinned, somewhat conspiratorially. 'And Sagittarius is my favourite constellation. I looked up and saw it the night we found Archer.'

'Sagittarius _is_ the Archer,' Jane clarified in response to Corbin's furrowed brow.

'Or at least the ancient Romans thought so,' Maura added. 'Nowadays people agree the constellation looks more like a teapot…'

'So, why didn't you change your name to Rizzoli when you got married?' Corbin asked Maura.

'Oh, because… I _am_ rather attached to my surname, despite not being terribly close with my family for a long while. It's not the surname of my birth parents, and it's been a nice reminder through the years that family can be found just as easily as it can be made through genetics. Jane didn't have any special need for me to take her name, and I liked very much that I didn't have to change anything about myself in order to have all of her.'

'We were kind of a dream team, at BPD,' Jane spoke up. 'We had help of course: Frost, Korsak, Martinez, I suppose…'

'Senior Criminalist Susie Chang…'

'Susie Chang!' Jane gave a sudden boom of laughter. 'Biggest cock block in the whole building! But yes, Maura was Queen of the Dead, I was arguably the best detective in the homicide unit…'

'If not the best detective, certainly the most modest,' Maura interrupted.

Jane only looked over at her with pursed lips. 'Sometimes I regret teaching you to use sarcasm. My point is,' she turned back to Corbin, 'when there was a dodgy death in Boston, you wanted Rizzoli and Isles, and neither of us wanted that to change just because we'd acquired some jewellery. It's not like the whole city didn't know we were a couple anyway.'

'I get the feeling there's a story here…' Corbin smiled expectantly.

'There was a high school shooting,' Jane began. 'We had cause to believe the shooter was a student who was going to try and walk out the doors scot-free looking like a victim when it was all over. The police secured one area, and Maura was back in the morgue doing autopsies on the bodies they'd removed, so we could get an idea of what kinda weapons we were dealing with. I was at the scene all day, and I still don't know how, but I lost my phone and didn't realise for hours. Maura had been trying to call me and-'

'I thought she'd been shot,' Maura blurted. 'And I tried to convince myself I was being ridiculous, but once I'd finished my autopsies, I just couldn't tolerate waiting and wondering, so I sped down to the high school, and thankfully found Jane alive and well. But I was so relieved that-'

'She ran at me,' Jane chuckled at the memory, 'in her heels. I've never seen anyone run so fast in heels before! She literally sprung off the ground into my arms and bear hugged me, in tears, and wouldn't let go. All this _right_ as the TV crew were coming up for an update report. Whole thing got broadcast live across the city.'

Corbin laughed while Maura looked guilty.

'Frost and Korsak gave me shit for weeks,' Jane continued. 'It was almost as bad as the time I spilt coffee on that bitch who tried to sue me. There's no way I'm telling you that story,' she assured Corbin, whose eyes had lit up again. 'So don't even ask.'

A knock on the door interrupted their conversation, and the thundering of young feet was quickly heard on the floorboards. Three seconds later, a boy of about six with an enormous mop of ginger curls sprang into the room with a big grin on his face.

'Bede! I've asked you not to run in the house! Next time it'll be a time out!' a plump, attractive woman with windswept hair bustled into the room and placed a halting hand on the boy's shoulder. 'Oh! I'm sorry!' she brought a hand to her mouth, noticing Corbin. 'We didn't realise you had company. Are we interrupting?'

'Hey, Addy! No, we're part of a History project,' Jane answered, standing up, and offering a hand to Maura. 'Queer civil rights.'

'Where are the boys?' Maura asked, taking Jane's hand to pull herself up.

'We're coming!'

'Where's my baby girl?' Jane asked impatiently.

'Here,' a tall teenage boy with jet black hair almost had to duck through the doorway, carrying a baby on his hip and a bag over his shoulder. 'You want her?'

'Yes, I want her!' Jane was already reaching for her granddaughter and making ridiculous faces. 'What kind of question is that?'

'Well, if it isn't the Boston State High School Senior Speech Champion himself!' Maura shuffled over with her arms open.

'Hi, Gran,' the boy smiled, setting his bag on the floor to give Maura a hug.

'Where's your father?' she asked, moving on to give the plump woman a welcoming kiss on the cheek, and ruffling the younger boy's curls.

'He's just getting some stuff from the car,' the teenager answered. 'Mom sort of… made a snap decision earlier today to adopt a pet from the shelter…'

'I've been volunteering there for the past few months, and I usually take a little Yorkshire Terrier on a walk,' his mother explained. 'I decided today to bring him home, and Archie told me on the drive over that he'd had a little Yorkshire Terrier as a kid.'

'Jo Friday,' Jane looked up from making little raspberries on the baby's cheeks.

'Yes, and we didn't want to leave him home alone on his first night, so…'

'Meet Joseph Wednesday,' the final member of the family walked into the living room with a scruffy little dog tucked under one arm, and a baby carrier in the other, a childlike smile on his face as he set both items down. 'Hey, Mom. Hey, Ma,' he greeted his parents with a kiss. 'Did you adopt another kid and not tell me?' he indicated Corbin with a cheeky grin.

'No, this is Corbin,' Jane explained again. 'He's listening to our life stories under the guise of getting good grades for History. Since, you know, we're considered pretty historical around these parts.'

'This is our son Archer, and his wife Adelyn,' Maura began the introductions. 'And their children Jethro, Bede, and-'

'And Emilia _Jane_ Rizzoli,' Jane finished proudly, rocking the baby back and forth. 'Sit down and tell this kid what it was like growing up with us,' she told Archer. 'He needs info for a Queer Civil Rights project.'

'Ah, okay,' Archer scooped up Bede, who was clutching Jo Wednesday to his chest, and settled down on an ottoman. 'Anything in particular you'd like to know about?'

'Just… if you were treated differently at school? Did you get teased for having two moms? Did it close any doors for you?'

'The opposite, actually,' Archer replied. He was a tall, attractive man, of average height and build. He wore rectangular glasses with black frames, and was growing what looked to be the beginnings of a goatee. 'When I was a kid, the majority of people were in favour of marriage equality, and gay rights in general. It wasn't as overwhelming a majority as it is now, but the debate was becoming fairly polarised: most people were all for gay rights, or not at all. Even then Boston was a pretty queer-friendly city, and so on the rare occasion that I did get harassed, there were people ready to jump in and openly defend me. High school is when most kids begin to get concerned about what their peers will think of their family relations. I think I would have been more concerned if it weren't for my sister. She's three years older than me, and very outgoing. She was one of those popular kids in high school, whereas I found refuge in the library, but I got quite a bit of protection through that connection. In the years after she graduated, my bookishness was almost celebrated, and any teasing from the jocks was always in good humour.'

'Did you ever hide the fact that you had two moms?'

'Haha, no,' Archer chuckled. 'Everyone at school already knew, since Isla was never shy about the subject. And my parents were on TV all the time. There aren't exactly an excess of Rizzolis in Boston.'

'And the shooting team loved me!' Jane butted in. 'Though they obviously didn't know me very well, because they gave me _flowers_ as a thank you for coaching them.'

'They did,' Archer acknowledged, amusedly. 'Jensen Brown joined the police force because of you. And my friends had no complaints about me being raised by these two,' he turned back to Corbin. 'The best baking, the best work stories!'

Another knock sounded at the door, and Maura frowned. 'Surely that can't be Isla already?'

And indeed it wasn't the eldest child of Jane and Maura, but Marsha, come to collect their eager interviewer.

'Already, Mom?' the boy whined, annoyed at being whisked away when he was on the brink of what he was sure was a plethora of wonderful stories. 'Five more minutes?'

Marsha nodded yes from the doorway. 'I've left your sister at home alone, Corbin, so five minutes means five minutes, okay?'

'Okay,' Corbin nodded. 'So, how does it feel?' he turned to Jane and Maura. 'To have lived through an era of such blatant homosexual discrimination, and come out the other side?'

'I'll tell you one last little story,' Maura volunteered. 'I was very upset when my mother was dying, and very confused about why she wasn't scared. She ended up comforting me about her own death, and she said something to me that I've never forgotten. I found out later that part of it was a quote from Zora Neale Hurston, but she said to me, "Maura, there are years that ask questions, and years that answer. I'm so old that I have no more questions about why the world has been so cruel; only answers about why the earth is so beautiful." I think I understand what she was talking about now. I'm living the years that answer, and even having experienced some atrocious inequalities, being allowed to love Jane now how I need to makes the sun shine brighter, and the winters warmer.'

'That's true,' Jane said matter-of-factly. 'It's my job to keep the fire going.'

Maura rolled her eyes, and smiled contentedly at her wife, bringing the back of Jane's hand to her lips to press a kiss there. 'Society has transformed before my eyes, and my love for Jane has morphed from sin to celebration. I don't have a single regret about where my life has ended up.'

'I suppose you're not so bad yourself,' Jane grinned wickedly, passing Emilia to Adelyn and wrapping both of her long arms around Maura's shoulders. 'I love you, too,' she said softly. 'I hope you know that.'

'I do,' Maura beamed, at the same time Corbin clicked off his voice recorder and Archer offered a loud 'You guys are more full of sap than a maple tree,' at which point Jane broke their embrace to good naturedly hurl a cushion at him.

'You don't think we'll end up like that?' Adelyn smiled at the two old women, and reached over to take her husband's hand.

'Not a chance, Addy,' he grinned, giving her fingers a squeeze. 'I think my parents have stolen the romantic quota from at least the next three generations.'

'I'm not sorry,' Jane said resolutely. 'My wife is better than all of you, and you all know it.'

* * *

'They're still really in love, Mom,' Corbin said on their way out the door, after goodbyes and thank yous and Happy Thanksgivings. 'They've been married since 2015, and they're still crazy about each other.'

'I know, honey,' Marsha smiled, stepping out onto the porch and pausing briefly to listen to the muffled laughing of the colourful family inside. 'Isn't it wonderful?'

'I think everybody should want to be like Mrs Is and Mrs Rizz when they're old,' Corbin ran ahead to the car to escape the cold.

'I know I do,' Marsha agreed silently, as she clicked the front door shut and followed her son out into the November evening.

* * *

**A/N: I hope you liked this; it's been heaps of fun to write. I have plans for a few other fics set in this universe, but I think I'm going to focus on my R&I/HP crossover for a while. Thanks for reading!**


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